It would probably be marketing's call.
Why are Fdev so bad at community management?
- Thread starter Lordxenu
- Start date
It would probably be marketing's call.
Of course. I don't doubt Will and co.'s good will. They follow orders. But given that they are the company's public face, and that we cannot directly talk to management, they also are the target of our complaints.
It's kind of their job though. A pilot who refuses to take off because he's afraid of heights isn't exactly great.
Yes, there definitely are unacceptable posts and insults, but is it really the best course of action to punish the whole community because of a few bad apples? Because the silent treatment is for everyone.
Its a bit like shooting the postman though isn't it?
Remember the Gnosis......looked good until FDev's got involved with it!!
They are not punishing anyone. They just know what they can and cannot say.
The only thing you can really crticize the team for is the quality of their communications and how they interact. You can't criticise them for not telling you something they are not allowed to tell you.
It isn't. A postman isn't a community manager. If you see them like postmen then you can use an answering machine instead of them. Much cheaper.
Remember that video about how they made ED? They were introducing some members of the staff in that video. I'd really like to see a new video like that from them. Something like 'Hi, my name is Blah-Blah. I'm a community manger at FDevs. My job is...' Because I would really like to hear what they think their job is. Just to be sure they actually know it.
This quote from DB is not the only explanation for their change in development direction. Because it wouldn't explain the huge delay of Horizons overall.
ED is an edge case, it is not a clear retail game, because it is still unfinished and in development. But at the same time, "addons" are released rather detached from other parts of the game. Also FDev calls it a game as a service in their financial report. Therefore regarding new features, that are unrelated to current content, I think radio silence is fine. This is the usual process in gaming industry. Only concrete information released , at about 6 months prior to release latest. But since ED is WIP, it still has bugs, that players, of course, want to be addressed. In that case radio silence is bad.
Additionally, given the current track record of EDs development, player might be especially inclined to have information about new features sooner than later, in order to inform about possible issues with them. I mean EDs dev history is full of "how could professionals not anticipate issue with feature XY?".
Edit: And regarding the smaller updates this year, we only have vague information even on the schedule. Similar to "there will be small update every 3-4 months". Starting when? Because 4 months since 3.3 have already passed.
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No, but you can criticise the policy that the CM team have to follow.
They can't complain, we have to complain for them
No, but you can criticise the policy that the CM team have to follow.
They can't complain, we have to complain for them
You most certainly can. Of course, FD might accept that critcism but refuse to change it, because there are also problems with being more open as well, for example, telling the players "we'd like to do X if we can" becomes "FD said they will do this" and then later "FD didn't do X! Down with FD!"
They know the community would love to know more, they might just not want the aggro that comes with it.
The overall delay was explained in another post around May 2016. They decided to put way more features and QOL improvements into Horizons than originally intended. That might seem ironic to those who are disappointed with the quality of the the main features, but that doesn't change the fact that Horizons was way bigger than what was originally sold.
It is certainly a tough one to fix and us armchair developers / CM's probably wont have the answer but when we are left devoid of all contact from Fdev this is where we go.
It happens in cycles this will lead to some poor response from will or Paige then we'll all go away arguing over whether they said enough and get quiet again then in a few month's we'll do it all again.
At this point it's just our frustration from all sources we can tell (yes including dreaded steam charts!!!) 3.3 brought in the most players the game has had (or certainly has had for a long time) so ultimately from a business point of view their approach is working.
from a fan's point of view it isn't but if we keep playing and paying does it matter if we are annoyed on the forums? I doubt it.
But at the moment Fdev have this market NMS is a different game SC isn't ready yet x4 seemed to go very quiet (maybe rebel galaxy will offer some competition who knows!) but whilst this is the case we will keep playing because there is nothing else.
If this was a looter shooter with poor CM we could go play destiny or division or warframe or anthem but we simply don't have a choice so there's very little incentive for the team to care about the community
It happens in cycles this will lead to some poor response from will or Paige then we'll all go away arguing over whether they said enough and get quiet again then in a few month's we'll do it all again.
At this point it's just our frustration from all sources we can tell (yes including dreaded steam charts!!!) 3.3 brought in the most players the game has had (or certainly has had for a long time) so ultimately from a business point of view their approach is working.
from a fan's point of view it isn't but if we keep playing and paying does it matter if we are annoyed on the forums? I doubt it.
But at the moment Fdev have this market NMS is a different game SC isn't ready yet x4 seemed to go very quiet (maybe rebel galaxy will offer some competition who knows!) but whilst this is the case we will keep playing because there is nothing else.
If this was a looter shooter with poor CM we could go play destiny or division or warframe or anthem but we simply don't have a choice so there's very little incentive for the team to care about the community
Was it? I think there was a lot of QoL stuff that mostly applied to the base game over the two years. What made it into Horizons that wasn't originally sold (2.4 being a mystery aside)?
Probably true, if another Elite game came along, with atmos landings & build your own complex gameplay, maybe I'd have ditched Elite ages ago.
SC - I looked at this about 3-4 years ago.....still no game yet......nuff said!!
X4 - not played it since Elite's last Beyond chapter was released on 11th December - Boy! players complain ED is full of bugs & unplayable, I'd to save my game every minute in case I got another CTD.
NMS - On release I didn't like the cartoony look to it & the reviews weren't good, so didn't bother with it. Now I'm pondering whether to buy it or not. If Steam had a sale on it, I'd snap it up, but at £40?.....still not sure, though the player reviews are less critical now.
Agree I think SC, if it ever gets there will wipe the floor with Elite if Fdev don't start building a community and some hype to keep people interested. On the flip side I'm not convinced SC will ever get there although it seems to look more and more of a game everytime I check in on it (have never played as I dont like buying pictures!)
X4 seemed to have a lot of noise then yeah just didnt grip anyone I thought Obsidian Ant was going to ditch Elite altogether at one point but then he just stopped playing it and NMS is a survival game set in space not a space sim so I don't even think the games are similar.
To be fair when it's your full time job like OA's it makes total sense to chase the views
Very OT, but I'd really love to see some numbers from the major YTers, seeing if and how much their average views have gone down over the last few months.
Streamer likes space games, streams space games, accused of chasing views
If he was chasing views then we'd be seeing him playing Fortnite / Apex Legends a lot more than we do
Also: Obsidian Ant has always covered space games on his channel, although Elite is a high focus for him. Every time he does a non-Elite vid he gets "omg, have you quit Elite" comments, hilariously
Streamer likes space games, streams space games, accused of chasing views
If he was chasing views then we'd be seeing him playing Fortnite / Apex Legends a lot more than we do
I don't think he was being "accused" of anything or was it mentioned as derogatory that he streamed popular games that said this is somewhat off topic now